Elite Jogging For Dummies

This morning I ran basically out and back to 1300 South with a little bit of neighborhood wandering in the middle.  Nice little route, actually, total time 1:03. 

Workout with the Black Sheep at Miller Park (approx 1500 E., 1100 So.). I arrived late and had an abbreviated warm up.  The meat of the workout consisted of 3 x 600 m on the entire single track trail that climbs west to east, paralleling the creek. Beautiful place to run.  Then we ran 3 x 400 m along the same trail, just cutting out the first section. These are hard, but rewarding.  Because the recovery back to the start is so long, it's hard to get in as much running as we would normally get on the track or the road but it is worth it.

No running.  I came down with the cold that everyone else in the house had already been enjoying.  

Still with the cold.  I didn't run, but I did go get a massage from Mark Oftedal. He spent an hour and a half working almost entirely on my left hamstring. What a huge difference it has made. I was having a hard time sitting for a long time without getting hamstring pain and Mark's work solved that, at least for now.  I really need to get on the table more regularly. It's probably the best thing I can do to maintain my training while minimizing injury as I get a little older. 

Still with the cold, though a little better. I ran 4 miles out and back through the U campus.  My head was stuffy and I didn't feel great, but my left leg was moving better after yesterday's massage.  

 I am planning to run the Bear Lake Half Marathon tomorrow.  The weather forecast is cool and wet. Cool is fine, wet is not so great.  With my cold and all, I'm not expecting a whole lot but I am looking forward to running for its own sake. 

 I ran the Bear Lake Half Marathon this morning. I chose this race since we have a cabin up here and it made sense to mix a race with a little getaway.   The plan was to run as well as I could given the limitations of my training and fitness.  The fact that I topped out at about 63 miles last week and then came down with a cold this week suggested that I may not have a whole lot to draw from if the going got tough.  The 6000' elevation wouldn't help.

The weather forecast was worse than the actual weather. It was in the 40s and cloudy, no rain during the race though it has continued to rain off and on throughout the day since. 

The race is pretty low key and although attendance is pretty good (about 400 I'm told), it's not a terribly competitive crowd.  At the start there was maybe one or two runners that were doing a pre-race warmup that I could see.  A few guys looked fit but I didn't recognize them.

It turned out not to be the guys that I had to think about.  After the race started, I was out in the lead right away and a woman named Jaclyn LaBell (spelling is likely off), a former Idaho State runner now living in Seattle, joined me almost immediately. Pace was easy--in the 6:15-6:20 range and I wasn't worried about running much faster than that if I didn't have to since I knew my fitness wouldn't let me push much hard later in the race.  We ran together for about the first 4.5 miles. This part of the course covered from the east shore of the lake, through to the main highway that leads into town.  We had a one mile stretch of dirt/gravel road which would normally be great but the road was totally soaked and very muddy.  I got very muddy myself.

Once we hit the main road, Jaclyn dropped back and I just sort of shifted into autopilot and tried to keep running pretty hard without having my legs blow off.  My cold was not doing  all that great and I was coughing pretty regularly. Thecourse is mainly flat, but there is some moderate climbing between miles 6-9.  Around mile 7-8 I started to catch up to the 10K runners and  spent the remainder of the race sort of meandering in and out of those groups of runners.  Said hi to my friends Keli & Helen who were running the 10k with about a mile and a half to go.  In the last couple of miles I had some calf cramping, which is the sign that my fitness won't permit me to go all that much longer.

I finished in 1:23:02 for the win, which is great, but a long way off of a great half marathon time for me.  Ultimately though, I think I ran exactly the race I could and should have run taking everything into consideration.

Most importantly, it was a pretty fun race.  I wanted to race for running's sake, rather than race for racing's sake, if that makes any sense. I'm in a pretty transitional period as far as my running goals are concerned and doing it for the right reasons is important to me.

Got a  great big sandstone plaque for the win, which should be right at home here at the cabin.